Has anyone tried using a MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick with Rogue Squadron? The game refuses to recognize buttons 7 & 8, but appears to function normally otherwise. RS apparently thinks there are only six buttons on the joystick, because when I press "Defaults" to reset the joystick mappings, RS maps buttons 1 through 6, but fails to map buttons 7 & 8. And, it won't let me manually map them either - it doesn't respond at all to buttons 7 or 8 when I attempt to map them to commands manually. Any ideas?

Z-axis: Thrust/Brake
To disable joystick control of your craft while flying, press Ctrl-J. To re-enable joystick control, press Ctrl-J again. Joystick control will automatically be restored when the level ends, in any manner.

If you are having problems controlling your craft while flying with a Joystick. Check the fine-tune control knobs on your joystick. Make sure they are centered. If the problem persists, re-calibrate your joystick, either through the Launcher (Hardware Configuration button) or through the Windows Control Panel.

Also, when using a joystick, make sure you're not accidentally bumping or moving the mouse while playing Although the craft will auto-center itself if this is done, it can be very disorienting, and make the craft difficult to fly. One solution is to disable mouse support by pressing Ctrl-M while in-flight.

Thanks for the reply. I tried to map buttons 7 & 8 to any command (I just about tried them all), but RS simply doesn't respond to either of these buttons. It apparently thinks there are only six buttons on the joystick. I've since tried the joystick with X-Wing Collector's Series, and it appears to recognize all eight buttons properly. One thing that I failed to mention in my original post was that I have DirectX 8.0a installed, so I'm going to revert back to 7.0a and maybe RS will work better with that.

hey, i think i had the same problem once. have you tried setting up your joystick with 'cutstomize joystick' in the control panel under gaming devices??? oh, the hat switches unfortunately can't be changed to anything else besides viewing (is this true???)

Are you talking about creating a Sidewinder "profile"? Since RS allows you to remap the game commands to the joystick buttons, I didn't think it was necessary to create a Sidewinder "profile". However, if since RS refuses to let me map buttons 7 & 8 within the Joystick panel of the game, I might be able to map these two buttons to RS keyboard commands instead using a profile. I'll give it a try.

awesome!!! i guess there's hope for me afterall! :P I have a Saitek Cyborg 2000 joystick, and it's very much like the one you got rogue. i've mapped the hat buttons for the game TIE Fighter with it. i guess i'll put the left and right hat to be brake left and right for the speeder

the top one can be used for switching weapons or laser sync, and the bottom one can be used for special.

All eight buttons on the MS Force Feedback 2 are distinct buttons - they should all function independently. And, in fact, they do function properly in the Game Controllers applet of the Control Panel. Because of this, I believe the problem lies with RS, not the joystick configuration or the joystick itself. Furthermore, X-Wing Collector Series recognizes and responds to all eight buttons, so this reinforces my belief that RS is the problem. I will do some more testing with other games just to be sure.